In spite of widespread appeal of participatory automobile and specialty vehicle races, the dangers to participant and the spectators has led to some concern over the years. However, efforts to substitute remotely controlled vehicles for the racer-driven cars, while also successful to a degree, are incapable of substituting for the participatory sport.
Miniature car-racing systems range from home assembled tracks with extremely small cars guided in slots of the track (slot car raceways) which are controlled by joysticks, dials or the like on a control box somewhat spaced from the track and generally connected thereto by wires. The cars are usually electrically powered and can be battery driven or driven by electric power picked up from the track.
Such systems have limited versatility and only very indirectly can represent actual track conditions or vehicle operations.
More realistic conditions are simulated at large slot car raceways in which electrically driven cars of larger scale, still a small fraction of the size of formula 1 or stock car racers, are controlled by an operator having an overview of the track and looking at his car from above.
In the largest of such earlier systems, even gasoline propelled vehicles may be remotely controlled as at still larger tracks, without the limitations of slot car racing, but also by an operator having an overview of the track and looking at his car and its relationship to the other vehicles on the track, and at the track itself, more as a spectator than as a participant.
The disadvantages of these systems have been recognized and many racing enthusiasts have viewed with limited favor various computer game-type simulations in which, under the control of a microprocessor or other preprogrammed unit, a track is displayed on a screen in a booth and the steering wheel and a brake control operated by the player can position the car along the track which rolls past the viewer.
While here the player does look upon the instantaneous circumstance from the vantage point of an operator, since no actual car or track is involved and the operator is simply handling an electronic instrument, much of the thrill, excitement and attraction of vehicle racing is lost.